


Falling

by Fyre



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 21:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2443028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zola had been captured, that much Peggy was aware of. She was waiting at the doors when Steve's squad returned. Only his squad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This has been the biggest single oneshot I have written in quite some time, inspired by a prompt on tumblr from [crimsontoad1](http://crimsontoad1.tumblr.com/), and written in around 6 hours o.0

Zola had been captured, that much Peggy was aware of. She was waiting at the doors when Steve's squad returned. Only his squad.

Barnes, dull-eyed and stumbling, came to her. "He fell," was all he said.

Peggy stared at him, then silently reached out and took his hand.

 

__________________________________

 

Barnes was out for vengeance.

He'd been ruthless and deadly when Steve was there, but without him, the only person who could exercise some restraint on him was Peggy. When he'd been at the range too long, she would go, and lay her hand against the back of his neck.

He would submit quietly, sleep like a normal person, eat like a normal person, function like a normal person, even though it was only a part he played.

He was the one to walk to the gates of Schmidt's lair. He was the one wearing a uniform that could be mistaken for Steve's at a distance. He was the one who carried the shield now that its owner was gone. He wasn't Captain America. He'd made that clear. But he was doing it in Steve's name.

Peggy was there too for the same reason.

She was meant to be among the cavalry. She was not meant to end up boosted onto the monstrous Valkyrie by Barnes. She was not meant to be the one to disconnect the tesseract from its moorings while he fought the Red Skull. She was certainly not meant to snatch it up in her hand.

It burned, but only briefly, before Schmidt - fighting free of Barnes - grabbed it from her. Her hand was pale, blistered with ice, and her legs were buckling under her as she watched the man screaming, evaporating.

Barnes didn't care. Barnes was at the steering column.

"You know how to fly this thing?" he yelled back.

She had to crawl to him, struggling into the cockpit. They patched them through to Stark, but he was too far, and there was nowhere they could land.

She looked at Barnes, and he nodded. "We finish it," he said. She pulled up the steering column and felt his hands at her shoulders, holding fast, as the plane went down.

 

_______________________________________

 

She woke, remembering the cold.

She wasn't cold, but she could remember it. The ship hadn't broken on impact. It was the cold that got her and Barnes. They had curled together, uncaring of modesty or propriety anymore. Her hand had burned, but the cold hurt more.

She could hear a wireless playing, and forced her eyes open cautiously. A bedroom, quite a nice one, bright, sunlit. She was in a bed, in a nightdress. She started to push herself up, only to come up short. Her right arm, below the elbow, was gone.

Peggy rose, stumbling to the window. It was... wrong. Something was wrong.

The wall smashed inwards under the impact of a body. The wall was thin wood. Flimsy. False. She could see someone through the hole. Barnes. As cleaned and polished as she was herself.

"Carter!" he rasped, scrambling through the wall. "We gotta go."

 

_______________________________________________

 

They did not get far.

Outside their cage, there were corridors, and doors, and they ran. They were chased. They were surrounded. Peggy's head was aching and light. Her arm throbbed, and she leaned on Barnes. She was not one to go down without a fight, but the fight had been ripped out of her by amputation and sedatives.

The city around them was strange but familiar.

New York, Barnes insisted, but no New York she had ever seen. It was all bright lights and colours and fast moving vehicles. She must have succumbed to the medications, slumping into Barnes' arms again.

When she woke, she was in a room much like the first, and Barnes was there.

In a flat, blank voice, he told her what had happened. Whatever Zola had done to him, whatever the Tesseract had done to her, they had survived being frozen. If they were meant to believe the people who now helped them, they were in the future.

She thought it was the drugs, that she was mishearing, but he shook his head.

"2012," he said quietly. "We're in 2012."

She didn't know why, but she started laughing, desperately, wildly, hysterically, and found she couldn't stop. 

 

____________________________________________________

 

Their families - at least what they knew of them - were dead. New generations had taken their places. She had no home left to go back to, and Barnes made no objections when she said she wanted to stay. 

They'd been back less than a month when they asked him to put on the uniform again.

He had nightmares that night. Peggy went to his room, woke him, held him. He didn't want to, but it was the tesseract. The thing they had tried to stop so long ago. He would put on the uniform, she knew, and this time, she could not bear arms.

They had spoken to her of prosthetics, of biomechanical devices. She had shut the door in their faces. Every night, with or without Barnes, she had been at the shooting range. Her left was always weaker. Her shots were off-centre. She was a liability rather than an asset.

"Come with me," Barnes whispered into her shoulder, still shivering from the nightmares.

"What can I do, Barnes?" she asked quietly, her cheek against his sweat-damp hair. "I don't know this world. I don't know how much use I can be."

He drew back and looked up at her. "Come for me," he said finally. "Be my shield." He laughed shakily. "They think I'm like him. They think I can do this. I can't, Carter. I'm not him. Not without you there."

She drew his head back to rest on her shoulder. "Very well," she agreed in a whisper.

 

_________________________________________________

 

She found a place on the carrier. No one questioned her presence out loud, though she could see them watching her, curious. Let them wonder, she thought, as she sat down with one of their new computer machines while Barnes wore the uniform and smiled like he was ready.

It wasn't so different from coding, all things considered. She found she could manage the machines quite admirably, although her typing had suffered, and her right arm was closed up in a sling.

They left her alone, but Barnes kept her up-to-date with all that was happening. Gods and monsters, science gone wrong, doctors and - of all the people - Howard Stark's son. It was a different kind of world.

She sat quietly on the bridge, watching them argue about a captive - Asgardian, they said. Alien it seemed. Related to the tall, blonde one. Thor. She wasn't about to question why Norse gods were suddenly making their presence known.

Men, she realised, were incapable of acting.

She made her way through the helicarrier to the cell where the prisoner was bound. He was the last one to hold the object that had burned her. He knew the power in it. He was playing a dangerous game. 

He looked human, but for the eyes. This was a dangerous creature. For the first time since she had woken, Peggy knew the ground she was standing on. She approached the glass, looking in at him. He was human enough for her to see the confusion on his face.

"You didn't expect me," she said.

"Should I know who you are?" he said dismissively.

She approached the glass. She looked helpless, she knew. Frail. Recovering. "Someone who has seen what you have seen," she said quietly.

The alien unfolded from the bench, approaching the glass. "The lost spy," he murmured. "Oh, yes. Did they send you to plead for information? Or because you know the power the tesseract holds?"

"You know what it's capable of," she said, laying her remaining hand against the glass. "You had it in your hands, and yet, here you are."

"Yes," he said, his mouth curving. "Here I am."

"Under whose orders?" she murmured. His mouth hardened into a line. "Oh, come now," she continued placidly. "I've heard of you, Loki of Asgard. Vast ambition, but little ability. Someone must be telling you what to do."

"Someone has been lying to you," he said, his smile back, but sharp and nowhere near his eyes. 

"No one has lied," she replied, smiling in response. "You held the most powerful artefact from your father's treasure room, and you couldn't even use it." She tutted quietly. "Really, no wonder they didn't want to make you King."

He was at the glass like an infuriated lion at London Zoo. "I will be a King!" he snarled, baring his teeth at her. 

"Yes," she said, tilting her head to look at him. "King of a lovely little glass box, with nothing but your temper for company."

He laughed then, dangerous and dark. "Oh, it's not my temper you have to be concerned about."

Peggy stared at him, thinking on who was on the ship with them: the man for whom the cage had been built. "Well, I'll be sure to take Doctor Banner some camomile tea, then," she said. she stepped back and curtseyed mockingly. "Your Majesty."

As she emerged, she ran into one of the other operatives, Romanoff, who looked surprised at her presence.

Peggy just smiled.

________________________________________________

 

It wasn’t enough to advise them of Banner’s impending problems. Matters only grew worse when the helicarrier came under attack. 

The world exploded about them, and they were scattered across all levels of the ship. Banner was… unhappy about the development. Peggy had fallen along with him and Romanoff, the Russian woman, and she saw Romanoff’s look of panic when Banner started screaming.

“Run,” she whispered, when Peggy scrambled over to help her free herself from the rubble. Peggy hesitated and Romanoff looked wildly between her and the swelling, terrifying shape of Banner’s alter-ego. She grabbed Peggy’s arm. “Run. Now!”

The bellow from the Hulk was enough to make her obey and she raced towards the nearest door, pressing it closed behind her. 

Her heart was racing, and the ship was ablaze. She knew she was about as much use as a chocolate teapot, unable to fire straight or even toss a grenade in a helpful way, so she locked herself down in one of the cabins. If they were Loki’s allies attacking, then he would be loose, as well as the Hulk.

Yes. Hiding was wise.

Things, it seemed, went badly. One of the operatives who had spoken gushingly to Barnes about how much he was admired, had been killed by Loki himself. Many others were dead too. Barnes stumbled through the ship, shouting her name, and when he found her, he wrapped himself around her, smelling of blood and oil and smoke. She threaded her fingers into his hair, and felt him trembling.

They were in a war zone once more.

She was called to the command deck by Director Fury and Agent Hill. She was to be part of their support network. Barnes joined others to go after Loki. Stark’s son had identified the location of their enemy, and she was left behind, watching from a distance as battle commenced.

She remembered seeing troops following the red, white, and blue before. She remembered seeing them leave. She remembered the space that was left when they returned. Before he left, Barnes took her hand, and squeezed it hard. A wordless promise.

The edge of battle was always an awful place to be. They won, so she was told, and as soon as it was done, she rose, catching Hill by the arm.

“Take me there,” she said. “Now.”

Barnes was waiting when the jet came into land. The ramp was scarcely down and she was running to him, and he to her. They collided halfway, and he buried his face in her shoulder, holding her tightly. Her fingers were in his hair, and she was crying for no reason she could explain.

_________________________________________

 

It became easier after that, little by little.

They joined the agency that had been created from the ashes of the SSR after the war. SHIELD. They were technically not agents, but Peggy had been Agent Carter for a long time, and the title remained hers. 

Barnes, despite his protests and intentions, was named Captain America.

He hated it, but their last battle with the Red Skull had burned his name and identity into a generation’s memories. Steve Rogers was the first Captain America to die for his country. James Barnes was the second, and the first to come back. For all intents and purposes, he was Captain America.

They took up an apartment in Washington, lived together first as colleagues, then as friends. Neither of them could be sure when it moved beyond that. From the first month, she had held him through his nightmares, and he through hers. They stopped sleeping in separate rooms after four months. They stopped sleeping separately in the bed after six. 

Perhaps it was inappropriate. Perhaps it was only clinging desperately to the one thing they both had. Perhaps it was neither of those things. What mattered was that they both acknowledged they felt safe with one another, and that was important.

Peggy was also pleased to make herself useful, both as an intelligence operative and as a member of their combat units. She sometimes accompanied James and Romanoff on their missions, without anyone daring to say she would be incapable. 

Stark’s son was wary around her, but insisted on helping acquire a prosthetic limb for her that was functional and not terrifyingly robotic. He created something that looked like an elegant lady’s glove, which connected directly to her elbow. 

The phantom pain of the tesseract burns still woke her in the night, but with her false hand there, she could be sure that she was awake. More often than not, she would wake to find that very hand had clutched bruises into James’s bare back. He never complained. He never would. It wasn’t in his nature.

So they progressed. They went on missions together and apart. They slept. They ate. They fought. Sometimes, they made love. Sometimes, they just had sex. 

Peggy lay in his arms one night, gazing at the light from the street as it stretched across the polished wood of the floor. Almost two years together, and she had still failed to persuade him to shut the drapes at night.

James was curved against her back, his face buried habitually in her shoulder. His legs were tangled between hers, one of his arms wrapped around her waist.

“Peggy,” he murmured sleepily. “You awake?”

“Mm.”

“Think we should get hitched?”

She tilted her head to look at him. “What brought this on?” she murmured.

He kissed her shoulder. “Just figured you should know you’re stuck with me.”

She drew his arm more snugly around her. “Hardly the most romantic of proposals,” she said.

She could feel one of his rare, small smiles against her shoulder. “You know I’m bad at the big gestures. Least I asked, right?” She nodded, and he was silent for a moment. “So?”

She smiled in the darkness. “I suppose so.”

“Wow. So romantic, Carter.”

“Mm,” she said sleepily. “I thought so.”

_______________________________________________________

 

They married privately. No one needed to know. No names were changed. The only real difference was that James referred to himself as Mr Carter. 

It felt right, fitting.

Romanoff was the one who guessed, several days after the marriage. There was a mission to a ship, and James responded to ‘Carter’. He didn’t even seem to realise he’d done it at first, but when he did, he gave Peggy a sheepish smile.

“So, you two?” Romanoff said, amused, when James leapt from the plane to make the first attack.

“What about us, Agent?” Peggy said, using her best mission tones.

“Contracted?”

Peggy couldn’t help laughing. “That makes it sounds like a death sentence.”

Romanoff just raised her eyebrows, lips twitching. “You’re the one who said it,” she said, then leapt out the plane after James. 

The retaking of the ship wasn’t exactly complicated, but problems arose. She had been dealing with some of the pirates on the deck when there was an explosion from the cockpit, and moments later, James stormed out in a rage.

“What happened?” she demanded, stepping over the scatter of bodies. 

“What happened is that we’re being kept out of the loop again,” he snapped. “This is like Hausburg all over again. How the hell am I meant to do what they expect me to do, when they’ve got people doing their own thing?”

Peggy glanced back towards the cockpit. 

Romanoff was standing in the doorway, her expression tight.

Unlike James - or Steve for that matter - Peggy knew the importance of making sure the right person was focussed on the right task. She didn’t know what Romanoff had been sent for, but if she had been sent, it was for a reason.

She raised her hand to her brow and saluted. She only hoped Romanoff wouldn’t take it as irony.

______________________________________________________

 

James was having trouble sleeping again. 

Something about the mission to the Lumerian Star had him on edge, not least because Romanoff had been collecting data. Why, she wouldn’t say. What it was, she couldn’t say. It was possible she was lying on both fronts. That was always the trouble of working with spies. They had their own set of mission parameters, and James hated it.

Peggy was making them both some warm milk when he padded through from the bedroom, and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind.

“You think I’m overreacting,” he murmured against her shoulder.

“I think SHIELD is more than just soldiers,” she said quietly. “Romanoff is standing in my shoes. I may be their soldier now, but I was their spy then.”

His cheek was warm against her throat. “I thought Fury trusted us,” he said unhappily. “He trusted me to be… him. Why can’t he tell us what’s going on?”

Her metal fingertips came to rest on his arm, light and cool. She could feel how anxious he was, the racing of his heart thrumming against the sensors. 

“I’ll see what I can find out tomorrow,” she said quietly. Even if it meant using skills that SHIELD knew little about, if it calmed him enough to push the nightmares back and help him sleep, she would do it. She turned in his embrace and kissed him gently. “You know what Colonel Phillips was like. I think Fury is like him on a grander scale.”

James lifted one hand to brush her hair back from her face. “Thank you.”

______________________________________________________

 

She didn’t have the chance to ask, and all avenues she took to investigate slammed closed on her. Fury was absent from the building, which should have helped, but instead, she was stone-walled on all sides. That put her back up, and she started to wonder if perhaps James was right to be suspicious. 

He met her at the front desk. He was looking calmer, than he had the night before. He often did after he attended his meetings at the VA. He had found a good support network of other veterans within Washington, though none of them knew he was the man people referred to as the Cap. They helped in ways that Peggy knew she couldn’t. 

One look at her was enough for him to know something wasn’t right.

“What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you at home,” she replied, letting him lead her out to the car.

They were halfway up the steps to their apartment when Peggy paused, touching James’s arm. He didn’t need to ask. They could both hear music playing in their apartment. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he shook his head. She motioned to the fire escape. James slipped out the window, as she went to the door, unlocking it.

The apartment was large, and they could cover both sides this way.

She had her gun out of her holster as she slipped into the shadows of the hall. Panels of light and darkness intersected as she moved closer to the living room. She blinked suddenly as the lights went on. James must have decided the intruder wasn’t a threat.

The lights went off again and her heart skipped a beat. She darted forwards, afraid of what she might find.

James put out his arm before she crossed the threshold of the living room. Fury was there, slouched in one of the chairs. The pale fabric was stained, dark. She could smell blood and gun smoke. 

“What’s going on?” she asked quietly.

“Nick’s wife kicked him out,” James said, but Fury was holding up a phone with two words glowing on the screen: SHIELD compromised.

Peggy understood at once. “Well, I suppose you can use our couch for the moment,” she said. “It folds out into a bed. Not a very comfortable one, mind you.”

In the half-light, she saw Fury nod. He started to rise. “That’d be…”

He never finished his sentence. The wall was blasted inwards by heavy weapon fire. James caught her around the waist, pulling her to the ground, and together, they dragged Fury out of range. His hand groped for Peggy’s, and his face was close to hers, bloody and bruised.

Something cold and metallic slipped between her fingers. The sensors in her hand read a data chip. “Don’t trust anyone, Carter,” he whispered.

 

______________________________________________________

 

James went after the assailant, but they were too far ahead and too fast.

The EMT crew arrived and Fury was rushed to the hospital, but the trauma was too extensive. Peggy was standing, watching in silence, James’s arm around her shoulder, when Romanoff arrived to see him crash for the last time. 

Peggy’s hands were matted with dry blood. She was tired, but she knew this field of combat.

They had stepped into her arena now.

She and James were called back to the Triskelion, and were summarily questioned by the head of the World Security Council. James was silent, shaken. Peggy took point, her flesh hand warm on his. He had no idea about the data drive she had sealed inside the casing of her right arm. 

Alexander Pierce was all grave concern and formality, laying out Fury’s deceptions and betrayals. She nodded in agreement, saying it must be the case, why in fact, only a few weeks ago, he had arranged for a mission within their own, and it had almost got people killed. James’s pulse was jumping against her fingers. He wasn’t made for these games.

They walked away, innocent allies.

Although there was a car they could use within the facility, she held James’s arm and he knew her well enough to walk with her, and call a cab on the far side of the bridge. She didn’t have to look back to know they had a tail.

“What’s going on?” James asked quietly. 

“They want to know how much we know.”

“About what?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m still working on that,” she said, “but they don’t trust us.”

“The tail?”

She nodded. “I hope they didn’t notice our driver.”

James turned sharply, looking at the cab driver. “Romanoff? How the hell did you find us?”

Romanoff didn’t turn from the steering wheel. “Your wife called.”

James looked at Peggy, who met his gaze evenly. “Fury trusted her.”

“Not enough to go to her,” James pointed out. 

Peggy could see the tension in Romanoff’s face. “Maybe not,” she said, “but I do.”

_________________________________________

 

Romanoff wasn’t surprised by the flash drive, but James was. 

In turn, Peggy was surprised when Romanoff confessed to knowing the identity of Fury’s killer, based on Fury’s injuries: they had a weapon, she explained, an assassin they had used for decades, nicknamed the Captain. It was meant as a mockery of Captain America, and it made James tense up.

“If he’s here,” Romanoff said quietly, “they’re not holding back. He’s their big gun.”

“You think they’ll send him after us?”

“You’re Captain America and Agent Carter,” Romanoff replied with a shrug. “If they decide you’re an enemy, they’d need something big to take you down. You guys survive more than you should.”

James and Peggy exchanged looks.

“Then we should find out what’s on the flash drive.”

____________________________________________

 

The flash drive led them to a base both James and Peggy knew well.

It also led them to the truth, in a room far below the main bunkers. Ancient whirling computers and a voice that made James go green and rigid. Arnim Zola. HYDRA, it seemed, were not as dead as they had been lead to believe.

They scarcely escaped from the encounter with their lives, crawling from the rubble, bloodied and aching, but with enough strength to run. SHIELD was compromised. HYDRA was everywhere. They had to lay low, and Peggy and Romanoff had no one outside of SHIELD that they could turn to.

James was the one to save them.

He stole a car and drove them to a quiet, leafy suburb on the outskirts of Washington. There was an apartment there, a friend, he said. Someone from the VA. The friend turned out to be Sam Wilson, who Peggy had met on a couple of occasions. A kind man, good-natured and warm, he let them in without any questions.

He and James spoke quietly as Peggy tried to calm herself by making a cup of some kind of fruity concoction, barbarically labelled as tea. She looked at Romanoff, who was sitting stiffly in one of the chairs. She made a second cup of the drink, and carried it over to her.

“Are you all right?” she asked quietly. 

“You just found out the agency your agency created is HYDRA,” Natasha said quietly.

“Yes.”

Natasha met her eyes. “I’m all right if you are.”

Peggy reached across the table and took her hand. “This is hardly our best day,” she admitted.

________________________________________

 

The crux of the matter was simple: Captain America’s mission had always been to take down HYDRA. James’s personal vendetta was to destroy the people who killed his best friend. Peggy’s own desire was to see anyone associated with tainting SHIELD - and in turn the SSR - burned to the ground. And Natasha wanted to prove who she was fighting for.

All of their paths intersected. 

Wilson watched and listened as they planned. He was a veteran too, Peggy knew. He’d seen action and lost people too. And yet, he stepped forward and offered them his arms. No. Not them. James. He knew James. He trusted James. And as people had followed Steve, Wilson stood up and followed James.

It hardly evened the balance, but it felt better to have more allies than none.

They went after Pierce’s associates first, a man called Sitwell. For someone supposedly loyal, he bent and broke easily. James was in no mood for being gentle, and Peggy was in no mood to restrain his temper. He was to be their key to the Triskelion itself, and to the heart of HYDRA’s plans.

He died before they even got there.

The Captain Natasha warned them about had found them.

 

____________________________________________________

 

He was sent to kill them.

Peggy had no doubt about that.

He was tall, broad, dressed in black, and masked. His head was shaved and a red star was tattooed onto the left side of his head. 

He had come expecting to face Captain America.

What he didn’t realise was that she and James had learned to fight all over again, together. James always felt steadier when she was there, so it seemed sensible to learn combat to support each other. They fought as one unit. With her false arm, she even had the strength to hurl the shield, and they beat him back, flanking him, knocking him to the ground. 

His mask shattered, his weapons kicked aside, the Captain rolled onto his back, staring at them.

James dropped the shield.

Peggy’s hand trembled around her gun.

“Steve?” James whispered. 

The man’s lips curled. “Who the hell’s Steve?” he snarled, snatching another gun from his belt. Peggy threw herself into James’s side, knocking him out of the way. The bullet caught her high in the shoulder, and she hit the ground, gasping. 

______________________________________

 

The Strike teams captured them.

Peggy couldn’t be sure how. She only knew the Captain - Steve - was gone, and they were bundled into trucks like refuse. James tried to keep a hold of her, but they hit him across the head and dragged him back. She couldn’t even lift her arm to defend him.

“Peggy,” James breathed hoarsely. “You good?”

Her head was resting against Natasha’s shoulder and she could feel blood running down her shoulder, soaking her shirt. “Here,” she replied just as unsteadily. “Did you see?”

“Steve.”

“Steve?” Wilson echoed. “As in Steve Steve? First Cap Steve?”

“Steve Rogers,” James said so quietly it was almost inaudible.

“That was… what? Seventy years ago?”

“Think who you’re talking to, Wilson,” Peggy murmured. She shuddered violently, remembering the blank look in Steve’s blue eyes. “The serum. It must have been the serum. He didn’t recognise either of us.”

“I shoulda gone back for him,” James whispered. “Oh god, Pegs. They had him the whole time.”

“You didn’t know,” Natasha cut in quietly. “Neither of you did. This isn’t your fault.”

Peggy wanted to argue, but her head was listing more heavily. She felt faint, weak.

“Hey,” Wilson said, “we need a doctor here. She’s bleeding…”

And just like that, they were rescued. She was so far out of it that she couldn’t quite follow what was happening, but Hill was suddenly there, in the Strike uniform, and there was a hole, and James was holding her, as they slipped through it.

She closed her eyes as the world turned black.

___________________________________________________

 

She woke to learn Fury was a better liar than anyone gave him credit for.

He was alive.

It was turning into a week of resurrections, she thought distantly. Natasha looked as numb and drawn as she felt herself. There was no time to grieve or rage or be relieved. There was no time for anything but the mission itself.

She sat at James’s side, his arm at her waist, holding her upright, as they listened to plans. Helicarriers. Intercepting codes. Infiltrating the Triskelion. She wished she had the strength to care more. 

Steve was at the forefront of her mind, and she had no doubt that was James’s first thought too.

In the darkness of this new bunker, hidden from the world, she lay in James’s arms through the night.

Fury had his plans, and they would assist, yes, but they had a job to do. They spoke quietly together, barely above a whisper, and made their own arrangements. Once it was done, once HYDRA’s threat was dealt with, they had work to do.

______________________________________________________

 

James and Sam were the ones to attack the helicarriers. Hill was their eyes and ears on the ground. Romanoff infiltrated in disguise. Fury would join them later. Peggy took point as the perimeter guard, her wound still healing and bad enough to affect her in combat.

Her duty was two-fold: warn them of incoming threats but also watch for the Captain.

They knew he would be there, and when he showed his face, she shadowed him. He was ruthless, a honed blade, killing without remorse or hesitation, and her heart ached. She saw him scramble atop a quinjet, killing the pilot, and she ran. 

It was one of the more hair-raising flights she had been on, suspended from the undercarriage by little more than her own strength and a single grappling hook, as he flew up to the helicarrier to deal with Sam and James. 

He didn’t notice her, or if he did, he didn’t care. It could have hurt, but with his eyes turned from her, she knew she could be more useful to James. 

Poor Sam got in his way, his wings ripped from him as he was hurled from the carrier. She saw the flare of his parachute, and could breathe again, as she crept after the Captain, as he descended into the belly of the carrier to stop James.

By the time she reached them, they were fighting.

It was far from a fair fight. James was strong, it was true, but he was holding back. She knew he could never willingly hurt Steve, which was why she was the one to raise the gun. The shot took him between the shoulders. The tranquiliser should have had enough power to stop an elephant, but Steve turned on her, leaving James bleeding.

His eyes were wide, pupils blown open from the chemicals, and she could see something like panic and flickers of confusion in his face. There were fresh burns on his head, as if he had been wired to electrodes. His mind was far from his own control, both drugged and corrupted, and he struck her. 

She fought back, because it wasn’t in her nature to submit. Even when he grabbed her metal forearm and twisted it, crumpling it like paper. Even when his hand was at her throat. That just meant he was close enough for her to stab the second tranquiliser dart straight into his throat.

 

__________________________________________________

 

The carriers went up in flames.

Neither Peggy nor James cared. They’d bound and dragged the unconscious body of Steve onto the quinjet, and slipped away in the smoke and chaos. He was their first priority, their Captain, and neither of them wanted to see him facing the American version of justice.

They took him back to the dam where Fury had hidden. HYDRA didn’t know about it, and Fury had indicated that once he left, he wasn’t coming back.

It was isolated. It was secure. It had massive metal doors that could be closed and locked from the inside to keep HYDRA’s asset from breaking out.

They locked him up in one of the cells, still unconscious, and tended each other’s wounds. Peggy’s arm was shattered and sparking. Stark wouldn’t be happy about that, she knew. She could move the fingers, but there was a delay and it hurt.

James said nothing as she cleaned the blood from his face and body. His eyes remained on the door, behind which their Captain was locked. He was trembling. Not visibly, but up close she could feel the constant shiver running through him. 

She made sure he ate, but knew there was no question of sleep, not until they knew what they were dealing with.

The screams started less than two hours after their arrival.

James was at the door in a heartbeat, and Peggy backed him up with the tranquiliser gun. He ran in, pinning the howling man on his back on the bunk. Steve recoiled at his touch, suddenly going still and silent. Peggy could remember that: a scream bitten off and never heard again.

Blue eyes snapped open, wide and unfocussed in the half-light.

“Hey,” James said hoarsely. “Morning sunshine.”

Steve struggled against the massive cuffs locked around his arms and legs, his breathing coming in rapid, choked chuffs. He keened low in his throat, recoiling away. No wonder. If his allies had harmed him to make him into this obedient, compliant weapon, what could his enemies be capable of.

Peggy moved behind James, her broken hand twitching against his shoulder. “Maybe you should get the Captain something to eat,” she murmured. “He must be hungry.”

James trusted her enough to protect herself. He rose, slipping by her, and went out into the bunker.

Peggy remained where she was, her expression placid. Her heart, though, was going like the clappers, as she looked down at the broken man before her. He was staring at her, as if weighing up his options, and she shifted the gun in her hand.

“We’re going to take care of you, Steve,” she said quietly. “James believes you’re still in there. I’m the one who will deal with you if you’re not.”

He understood. He said nothing, his eyes narrowing to slits, but he understood.

___________________________________________

 

It took time before he would speak.

James sat with him more often than Peggy. She didn’t want to grow accustomed to his presence again, not if he was unable to be saved. If he was truly HYDRA’s, if the man they knew was gone, she didn’t want to have spent days, weeks looking at his face, imagining he would be himself again.

It made more sense for James, too. He knew their childhood stories. He knew the troubles and joys they had shared in their youth. He spoke often and quietly, until his throat was dry and his lips were cracked, and then he would leave Steve where he was caged, and go and weep on Peggy’s shoulder.

In the end, it wasn’t some childhood sentimentality that broke through.

She was sitting outside the door, when James sighed quietly, and said, “I bet you even support the Giants now.”

The hiss of fury made her step into the doorway. Steve was sitting up against the wall, but he was leaning forward, his eyes blazing. “Wash your mouth out,” he snarled. “Dodgers until I die.”

James was silent for several seconds, then started laughing.

__________________________________________________________

 

It was like the first pebbles shaking loose a landslide.

He wasn’t Steve, not by a long way, but he was no longer entirely the Captain, as forged by HYDRA.

They couldn’t risk undoing his shackles entirely, but they let him walk into the main room of the base, eat with them there. He was there when Peggy finally had to bite the bullet and let James disconnect the ruin of her arm. He was there when James undressed her wound and cleaned it.

“You were shot,” the Captain said quietly.

Peggy looked over at him. “Yes. By you.”

His brow furrowed, and she wondered just how frequently they had stripped his memories from him. “I did that?”

“Mm.” She winced as James pressed a fresh piece of gauze to the wound. “Not a clean shot, but since you were aiming for James, I felt I should get in the way.”

“James,” he echoed quietly. He looked down at his cuffed arms, frowning. “That’s not right.” He shook his head slowly. “Only his mom calls him that.”

James’s hand went still on her shoulder. “It’s true,” he said. “You know what you used to call me, right?”

Steve looked up, right at him. “Jerk.”

James laughed shakily, and Peggy lifted her hand to squeeze his fingers. “Close enough,” he said.

 

________________________________________________

 

Eventually, Steve was calling James Bucky once more. Every time he said it, there was hesitation, caution, as if he wasn’t sure he was correct, and every time, James lit up, smiling. He looked brighter than he had in all the years since Steve’s fall.

Peggy was happy for him. His nightmares came rarely now, and for all that they were living in a cave with an assassin who could potentially turn on them at any moment, there were far worse situations to be in. 

She watched Steve intently any time they were in the same room as one another. James had never really known much about the serum, but she could see its effects on Steve day by day. He was as strong as ever, and his wounds had healed absurdly fast. All but his memories. Whatever they had done to his mind had to be brutal, if the damage was taking so long to repair itself.

He still didn’t know her, not as anything more than Agent Carter, SHIELD operative. He was polite to her, but most of his focus was on James. It was understandable. They had a far deeper bond than anything she and Steve had ever had a chance to develop. 

More often than not, they would just sit in silence when James went to fetch fresh supplies. Once in a while, he would ask a question out of nowhere. Sometimes, it was something to do with a particular mission. Sometimes, it was about a food he could remember. Whatever came to his mind, he would ask, before it slipped away again.

She was working on a sudoku puzzle when she heard his chair shift, and he cleared his throat.

Peggy looked up.

He was watching her, a puzzled frown furrowing his brow. “Did we dance?”

Peggy’s mouth was suddenly dry, her heart a drumbeat in her chest. She sat up. “We never had a chance to,” she said quietly. “One day…”

“When this is all over…” He shook his head sharply, as if he was trying to dislodge something, pressing his hand to his brow. When he looked at her again, it was the same expression he’d worn when she’d approached him in the bar. “You looked good in red.”

Peggy’s vision blurred with tears she had never allowed to fall. She was smiling, she knew, when she said, “Hello, Steve.”


End file.
